The biggest movie in the country right now is about a civil war, in the United States.
If you watch the movie “Civil War” in a downtown Washington theater, the scenes of the Lincoln Memorial explosion and the attack on the White House are jarring when you step outside DC.
The film is writer-director Alex Garland’s very direct attempt to imagine the unimaginable in America: an authoritarian leader in the White House, intractable political differences being resolved through violence, and the very specific horrors of modern warfare: urban fighting. , refugees. camps, mass atrocities, the collapse of the currency: all the things that we associate with things that can happen there and that happen here in the United States.
“Civil War” is also a film about journalism.
It follows four reporters as they travel from New York to Washington, DC, via a circuitous route through Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia.
The film addresses many of the important topics we talk about on shows like this: media ethics, political polarization, the misinformation polluting our media ecosystem, and the potential threat of an autocratic leader.
Wagner Moura plays a hardened war correspondent addicted to the battlefield. He also brings some much-needed levity to the film.
Moura is best known for his role as Pablo Escobar in “Narcos.” But he is also a former journalist, a political activist and also a writer and director. His 2019 film “Marighella” about the coup and counterrevolution in Brazil in the 1960s drew the ire of then-President Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Moura’s home country.
Deep Dive host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza spoke with Moura on Thursday just as festivities began at the White House Correspondents’ Association’s annual dinner in Washington. It’s the time of year when the relationship between journalists, politicians and Hollywood is at its peak in this town.
They had a fascinating conversation about how making a film about a new civil war changed Moura’s personal thinking about politics, how his experience with Bolsonaro in Brazil is a warning to Americans, and the role of art in politics.